Earthquake in Northern Japan

Hi everyone,

Everything is fine where I live in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. Though the earthquake was something like an 8.9 around the Pacific but it was only a 4 or so here. I live fairly far from the coast and am shielded by a lot of mountains as well so the tsunami had no effect on life here, either. I was at my board of education at the time and the shaking lasted for quite a while. When I got home, I found glass from cups on my drying rack which had fallen into my sink and my toaster had fallen off the a shelf. Other than that no major damage to my home or office. Aftershocks have continued for the past day and a half and from what I heard are expected to continue through the week. We also had a blackout from Friday to Saturday afternoon, but power is back now.

Aside from the events this weekend, yesterday as a pretty normal day. I went to a hot spring with my friends and got some udon at a local noodle shop and bought a hot new pair of Nikes to wear at work. A night of pizza and Japanese horror movies with friends are the best ways to tide over periodic aftershocks of the worst recoded Japanese earthquake in history.

Of course I am also following the situation at the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima, approx. 148km (90 miles from my city). Last night the Japanese government announced that although the concrete structure housing the nuclear core (which I believe is also surrounded by some sort of metal structure) exploded, no radiation had been released into the environment. But checking western media this morning it looks like some radiation ultimately did vent into the environment in gaseous form and the area around the plant in a 20km radius is being evacuated. Luckily the winds are blowing out to the Pacific so there is no immediate threat to anyone further inland from that disaster. Unfortunately another nuclear core in the facility has gone critical as the cooling system has failed and meltdown has become a possibility. They are trying to cool it with seawater now I believe.

Anyways, I'll try and keep everyone posted from what I see in the Japanese media and from what's going on in my town. I'm going to spend the morning preparing for another blackout and stocking up on what food I can find at the supermarkets. I may be out of touch for a while again if the blackouts this time are more longlasting and/or NTT's telecom traffic becomes to bogged down for me to use the internet.

Please direct your concern to anyone that lives on the Pacific coast, as far as I know all my friends in that area are okay but I'm still worried for them since phone calls and mobile emails won't go through. Also, thank you for all your concern, I'm really touched that you all reached out to me. Talk to you again soon.